In raising our children, we often encourage them to perform tasks the way we would perform them ourselves. We reason, this was the way we were taught by our own parents and if it was O.K. for us, it should be right for our kids as well.
Sometimes, we forget to make allowances for the differences that exist in our personalities. By forcing our children to act the way we act, we may well be restricting them from being their own natural selves.
Today’s education is entirely different from when we went to school. Just watch the kids solving simple mathematical exercises. While we might well come up with the same answers, the process we use is entirely unrelated to that used by the kids of today.
Their personalities are developed in a very different environment from ours. They have access to the world wide web and can research information far more effectively using their laptop computers, tablets or their phones. It severely reduces the time and effort we used up in visiting the local library to look up volumes of encyclopaedias.
So, while they may have different ways of achieving the same results, by allowing them to proceed in their own way helps them develop their independency, problem solving ability and self worth.
In the process we may well learn some new ways ourselves.
I’m Peter Mack and that’s life.